In various settings, it may be useful to provide a sprayer vehicle for spraying various liquids and liquid solutions over agricultural (or other) areas. Typical sprayer vehicles may include one or more tanks, which may be filled with various substances, as well as various spraying devices for dispersing the contents of the tank(s) during a spray application.
In various operations, it may be useful to determine the volume of a substance in a tank (i.e., the tank “fill-volume”) with a relatively high precision. For example, certain spraying operations may utilize mixtures of relatively precise composition, which must be pre-mixed within the sprayer tank by adding various chemicals (e.g., various powdered chemicals) to one or more carrier liquids (e.g., water). Accordingly, in order to ensure appropriate mixture composition, it may be useful to know the fill-volume of a carrier with relatively high accuracy. Similarly, knowledge of precise tank fill-volumes may ensure that sufficient liquid (or other substance) is provided to cover the entire area to be sprayed, as well as allowing more accurate tracking of chemical dispersal over a field. To this end, various devices may be provided to measure an indicator of substance volume. For example, sight tubes may be provided on sprayer tanks in order to allow an operator to visually assess fill-volume. Likewise, devices such as load cells or float sensors may provide more automated measurements of tank fill-volumes.
In various instances, however, a sprayer vehicle may be oriented with various degrees of tilt. For example, if a vehicle stops on contoured or slanted terrain for a filling or mixing operation, or drives over contoured or slanted terrain for a spraying operation, the vehicle may experience various degrees of pitch or roll. As used herein, the “pitch” of a vehicle may refer to a rotation of the vehicle about an axis extending along a lateral fore-aft centerline of the vehicle, as would correspond to inclination or declination of the vehicle in the forward and reverse directions of travel, or the fore and aft of the vehicle when stationary. The “roll” of a vehicle, in contrast, may correspond to side-to-side vehicle rotation about a longitudinal centerline of the vehicle. It will be understood that tilt may adversely affect the accuracy of known devices for measuring fill-volume, potentially resulting in sub-optimal accuracy in fill-volume assessments.